Monday, March 14, 2011

The start of a beautiful friendship....

The last week has been a series of deadlines, so until today I've not had time to play with my new toy. Today, the lovely Jules came around and gave me an introductory lesson in machine knitting. I learned about casting on, tension... and then we had a bit of a play with the punch-cards for the patterned stitches.....

..which ended rather badly.

More research is necessary, into exactly what that little loose cog I found is for and why the machine goes CRUNCH when doing anything but stocking stitch... (I think there may be a bit of a cause-and-effect thing going on there).

I'm still a bit excited by the stocking stitch thing, though..... I went home and knitted a 1.5 metre cotton scarf. I'll see what it looks like when it's dyed.

15 comments:

sorry to add to temptation, BUT.... if you use yarn suitable for dying and make up as machine knitted piece and then dye the fabric, and then unravel it to hand-knit it into something else you can get slow colour changes rather than the random blotches with yarn that is dyed as yarn.

Oh no, you didn't! Knitting machines seem to be coming back into vogue, I have a friend who uses hers to make wool fabric (you need to stabilise it a bit before cutting out your pattern). Fantastic idea though! Makes me wish my Mum didn't give hers away all those years ago..... :)